Course content

This course will discuss different features of the cultural
industries and how these concretely relate to cultural-, media-,
and communication policy. The course starts with an early account
of the cultural industries exemplified with texts by Theodor W.
Adorno and Max Horkheimer, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s writings on
the field of cultural production. These early formations will be
discussed in relation to commodification, business ownership and
structure, of popular understandings of culture vs.
intellectual/elitist understandings, of value and capital, and how
the cultural industries affect and manage quality, creativity and
knowledge. This first part of the course will end with policy
related discussions on transitions from the cultural industries to
the creative industries, on the rise of the creative classes, the
experience economy and cool capitalism.

Contemporary cultural industries can however not be separated
from the information society and the manifold convergence processes
digital communications entail. The course’s main focus will
therefore be on the impact digitalisation, digital communications
and the internet have on the cultural industries. These include
changes in telecommunication and broadcasting regulation, on
processes of deregulation and re-regulation, on media and cultural
convergence, on cultural marketization and how these relate to
established PSB models.

How do for instance internet giants such as Facebook, Google and
Microsoft relate to media and cultural industries conglomerates
like Disney, TimeWarner, CBS and News Corporation? How can the
structure and dynamics of global media and cultural industries
networks best be described, and what would be an adequate method
and theoretical framework to conduct an analysis of these
structures? And what about notions such as remix cultures,
intellectual property, DIY cultures, social media, big data,
privacy, surveillance, and digital labour?

Questions that will be posed and discussed from the viewpoint of
the changing dynamics of the cultural industries will include: What
is user-generated content and how does that relate to copyrights,
digital labour, professional cultural workers and artists? How is
privacy policy, data use policy, and rights and terms framed by
Google, Facebook, Instagram, Diaspora and Ello? In which ways do
online participatory cultures affect the cultural industries? How
does technology frame user-manoeuvrability and how does this relate
to policy, governance, ownership and business models? What are
Spotify’s effects on local music markets? Which challenges does a
service like Netflix impose on the field of media, cultural and
communication policy in local contexts? How do local Danish
‘YouTube stars’ feed into the terms, policy and economic model of
YouTube, and what do these processes say about contemporary
cultural industries in the digital age?

The course will be taught in English. Students can however
choose whether they wish to write the final exam in English or
Danish.

This course is one of the three courses offered this semester that
constitute the latter part of a cultural policy module (the first
being the mandatory course Cultural Policy – Theory, Method &
Analysis). Students are asked to hand in and pass two mandatory
assignments defined by the responsible teacher.